MPs to probe spate of po­lit­i­cal killings in KZN

MPs ARE in KwaZulu-Na­tal this week to look at the po­lit­i­cal killings in the prov­ince, with the ev­i­dence from the Mo­er­ane Com­mis­sion of In­quiry at the cen­tre of their meet­ings with of­fi­cials.

The com­mis­sion be­gan its work a few weeks ago with one of the ex­perts and ac­tivists say­ing there had been 89 deaths at Gle­be­lands hos­tel over the last few years, with no ac­tion taken against the per­pe­tra­tors.

Two more peo­ple were shot dead at the hos­tel last week, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of deaths to 91, and there have been no ar­rests.

The chair­man of the port­fo­lio com­mit­tee on po­lice, Fran­cois Beuk­man, said yes­ter­day they wanted to get to the bot­tom of the killings.

He said the com­mit­tee’s visit would strad­dle the prov­ince, with the aim of un­der­stand­ing the state of polic­ing there.

MPs will meet with the In­de­pen­dent Po­lice In­ves­tiga­tive Direc­torate over the al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct against the po­lice re­lat­ing to the ev­i­dence pre­sented against them at the Mo­er­ane Com­mis­sion of In­quiry.

One of the ex­pert wit­nesses at the com­mis­sion said last week that some po­lice of­fi­cers were col­lud­ing with the peo­ple in­volved in the killings, and that last week’s killings had hap­pened un­der the noses of the po­lice.

The wit­ness de­scribed the hos­tel as a go-to place to hire hit­men.

Beuk­man said they would also meet with Hawks act­ing head Lieu­tenant-Gen­eral Yolisa Matakata this week in Dur­ban, where they would dis­cuss the break-in at the Hawks of­fices three weeks ago.

The bur­glary at the Hawks of­fices in Pre­to­ria was sim­i­lar to an­other break-in at the Of­fice of Chief Jus­tice Mo­go­eng Mo­go­eng in Joburg a few months ago.

The thieves made off with 15 com­put­ers con­tain­ing sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion on the coun­try’s more than 250 judges.

There was also an­other bur­glary at the Of­fice of the Chief Pros­e­cu­tor in Pre­to­ria, Ma­tric Luphondo, last week.

Po­lit­i­cal par­ties have ex­pressed con­cern at the spate of bur­glar­ies in the of­fices of top of­fi­cials in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

They called on the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, Michael Ma­sutha, to get to the bot­tom of them.

They com­plained that more than three months af­ter the break-in at Mo­go­eng’s of­fice in Midrand there was no end in sight to the bur­glar­ies, and no clear mo­tive had been es­tab­lished.

They said that un­less the gov­ern­ment un­der­took an ex­ten­sive, co-or­di­nated in­ves­ti­ga­tion into the break-ins, they would con­tinue.